View full sizeVanessa Byrd (right), a member of Fighting for Our Right to Children's Education, or FORCE, speaks during a rally for discipline reform in the Mobile County Public School System at Revelation Baptist Church on March 24, 2012. Jadine Johnson, of the Southern Poverty Law Center, is at left. Johnson said she continues to pursue a federal lawsuit challenging the school system's suspension practices. (Michael Dumas/Press-Register)

MOBILE, Alabama – Parents and guardians suing the Mobile County school system over its use of long-term suspensions will press ahead with the case even though a federal judge has denied a request to certify it as a class action.

Chief U.S. District Judge William Steele ruled earlier this year that class-action status would make the litigation more complicated without offering any potential benefit to the plaintiffs. In a recent interview, an attorney for the Southern Poverty Law Center said additional plaintiffs could file complaints.

“We’re moving forward,” said Jadine Johnson, who represents five plaintiffs. “We continue to litigate the merits of the case.”

The plaintiffs contend that principals improperly have imposed long-term suspensions – lasting 10 days or longer – without giving the students notice or an opportunity to defend themselves at hearings.

The Montgomery-based Southern Poverty Law Center had sought to proceed as a class action, meaning the named plaintiffs would represent the interests of all similarly situated students. The plaintiffs have said the school system improperly suspended 1,743 students since the 2009-10 academic year.

But Steele noted that the plaintiffs do not seek monetary damages, only a court order enforcing students’ right to due process hearings before long-term suspensions can be imposed.

“Those remedies would be identical whether this action is certified as a class action … or not,” he wrote. “They would inure to the benefit of current and future MCPS students, whether those students are labeled members of a class or not.”

A class action “would yield inefficiencies and complexities that would needlessly burden litigant and judicial resources alike, all for the sake of obtaining a class injunction that would be identical in scope, breadth and effect to an individual injunction awarded in favor of the individual plaintiffs alone,” the judge wrote.

Meanwhile, attorneys from both sides continue to gather additional information in preparation for a nonjury trial scheduled for Aug. 1.